The Circus

This sums up nicely what annoys me with football in this country:

Picture the scenario, a brave British Olympic athlete has a bad start in the 400m qualifying round, but pulls it out of the bag to not only achieve a result that will likely see them qualify for the final event, but also showed during the race that they’re actually pretty decent and peformed pretty well compared to previous outings.

The media would be falling over themselves to congratulate this athlete and praise the fighting spirit and not only did they show they were the better athlete, but also that they had the fighting spirit to not give up and eventually got the result they needed, even if it wasn’t the result they had hoped for. etc etc etc

But this isn’t the Olympics, this is the spiteful, over-hyped, poisonous world of football “journalism”. A match in which Roy gave plenty of opportunities to young players — Cleverley, Chamberlain, Welbeck & Sturridge — rather than turning to the same old faces; a game in which the referee robbed England of a perfectly fine goal thanks to some fine play acting; a game against the strongest team in our qualifying group (besides ourselves); a game in which we showed, at times, England can pass the ball out from the back and play entertaining football.

But what’s the overall view on the game by the “experts” (who, whether I like it or not do have an ability to rewrite history in the minds of many fans): “flops”, “dismal”, “pampered Premier League prima donnas”, “our glorious summer of sport to a juddering halt”. What. The. Fudge.

I say to all you football journalists out there. Please, please, please do your job like a professional and let us enjoy football all year round the same way we were allowed to enjoy the coverage of the Olympics this Summer. How much media attention did the doping & cheating at the Olmpics get? It was reported on when it was news, and then we got back to the business of enjoying the sport.

I really hate the circus that football has become, I want to read about yesterday’s game, tomorrows games and everything inbetween — I really do wonder why the media are like this — do they think people would be less interested if they had sane coverage of the sport instead? I can’t believe that. Perhaps this is just easier, I’m not writer afterall, perhaps the people writing this stuff are just massive ****s?